Year of the Horse takes China down a narrow trail

Opinion: Leadership keeps tight rein on social order and political austerity

By

ReginaAbrami

Reuters

While more than a billion Chinese celebrated the arrival of the Year of the Horse with family visits and festivities, the country’s paramount leader, Xi Jinping, continued efforts to drive the country in a more austere direction.

Intended to ready the country for the decades ahead, trends underway reflect another goal as well --- to keep the Communist Party of China in power. To understand where China is heading, it’s important to realize what it means to lead China now.

Let’s start with some basics. There is just one fact to remember. The government is subordinate to the ruling political party if by no other means than that its highest offices are staffed by them. Xi Jinping embodies this structure by simultaneously serving as the head of the state (“President Xi”) and of the ruling party (“General Secretary Xi”), and Chairman of both the state and the Party’s Military Commission (the equivalent of “Commander-in-Chief Xi”).

China's economy expected to slow further

(3:53)

A slew of economic problems, including excessive local debt, has marred China's economic growth. Citibank China economist Minggao Shen tells Deborah Kan what hurdles the country faces in jump-starting growth in 2014.

Such duality goes pretty far down the state bureaucratic chain, ensuring that allegiances lay with Party higher-ups who select able-bodied subordinates to fill government slots. As a result, the appointment system that has kept the Party in control can just as easily topple it if no oversight or accountability exists of those at the top.

China is, after all, a stunningly hierarchical system. But it is also one with a deep historical tradition of linking political legitimacy to a meritocratic administrative system that in theory permits only the most upright and competent at the top.

The Confucian examination system that fueled this system is now long gone, but the popular expectation that those in power should serve as a source of moral leadership remains. Xi Jinping’s calls for austerity should be seen in this context. There is his unscripted visit to grab a simple lunch in Beijing, foregoing alcohol during a countryside trip, and a wife who is a folk singer.

Law and order

Such symbolism has been matched with lofty slogans, most notably the “China Dream,” and stern criticism of Party members who have lost sight of the big picture, flashing high-priced watches, skimming state resources, and holding disdain for the Chinese people.

Reuters

Chinese President Xi Jinping

Of note in all this is the implicit link between the stability of China and the moral rectitude of its leadership. To the extent it exists, there is no place and also no reason for dissent. What remains is space for order-making.

Not fully a year since being named President of China, and only three months since becoming the Party’s ruling leader, Xi Jinping is following this script meticulously. A corruption probe of Zhou Yongkang, the recently retired Political Bureau official who had both the police and security apparatus in his portfolio, continues to make its way behind closed doors. The same cannot be said for Xi’s one-time competitor for China’s top spot. The trial of Bo Xilai was aired nationally, and came to an inevitable conclusion. He was found guilty, with full transcripts widely available.

If these cases made examples of leadership norms gone astray, the introduction of a new National Security Commission, headed by Xi Jinping, sheds light on how the current leadership has made sense of the roadblocks and political threats facing the prior administration. Of note, divvying up committee assignments across members of the uber-elite Political Bureau Standing Committee all but ensured particularistic interests, limited coordination, and at its worst small fiefdoms and issue areas where popular resentments percolated unattended.

Not surprise then that order is depicted as the basis of both stability and freedom in China. The current leadership has said as much in word and deed --- cracking down on Internet and press freedoms, while pairing the new Commission with another recently established political entity — a leading small group on deepening reform, again with Xi Jinping at the helm.

Cynics might say that these developments only indicate a strongman in the making, a modern Mao, a reinvented Deng Xiaoping. Such a view, however, downplays parallel intentions of China at home and abroad, and that is to be a status quo power. On the global stage, Chinese representatives do not flinch when stating that their country means only to develop economically, respecting the sovereignty of neighbors, and asking the same in return.

The goal as such is not world domination, but avoiding a so-called middle-income trap, where China is unable to make the transition to an innovative economy. And yet for all the waving away of its expanding global footprint, there remains a strong sense of nationalism that has underneath not only pride, but a surprising degree of over-sensitivity that belies China’s global significance and influence.

Might a new national anthem perhaps do the trick? Rather than singing “rise up,” how about instead “China has risen”? As a start, we have Xi Jinping, and his tune is clear. Welcome to the year of no horsing around.

Intraday Data provided by SIX Financial Information and subject to terms of use.
Historical and current end-of-day data provided by SIX Financial Information. Intraday data
delayed per exchange requirements. S&P/Dow Jones Indices (SM) from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
All quotes are in local exchange time. Real time last sale data provided by NASDAQ. More
information on NASDAQ traded symbols and their current financial status. Intraday
data delayed 15 minutes for Nasdaq, and 20 minutes for other exchanges. S&P/Dow Jones Indices (SM)
from Dow Jones & Company, Inc. SEHK intraday data is provided by SIX Financial Information and is
at least 60-minutes delayed. All quotes are in local exchange time.